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Rudy’s momentum halts, and G2’s terrible draft: Joe’s LCS blog

It’s only the halfway point, but the spring split of the League of Legends Championship Series can’t end fast enough. It’s the last split until changes come through, and right now it’s still hard to gauge who’s the best teams in Europe, even in Week 5.

Rudy gets put in his place; Thoughts on H2K going forward

Overall, most of Europe appears a lot weaker compared to the other regions, and that’s becoming more clear every week. H2K’s weakness in mid lane is still obvious, as Hampus “Fox” Myhre had complete control of the mid game, making roaming plays on Ahri all over the map. H2K is still finding ways to win without starting mid laner Ryu “Ryu” Sang-wook, but the last couple weeks have been rough. The team today was carried by Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski in the early game, totally predicting Rudy “Rudy” Beltran’s pathing, showing the new solo queue jungler what it’s like going against the best jungler in the region. However, Jankos and H2K got over aggressive with its lead, and some great roaming by Fox got UOL back into the game. H2K is the best team in Europe but remains beatable. Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou is an extremely good ADC, the best in the West, but he has a limited champion pool. He has somehow gotten to play Corki multiple times this season, which is surprising when everyone knows his champion pool. He has yet to show that he plays Kalista, and teams are not forcing him to do so. Still, all H2K needs to do is stay in the top of the rankings until Ryu gets back for playoffs.

G2’s terrible draft
Throughout the season, G2 Esports has been impressive. Even today against Vitality, G2 showed some great aggressive plays, such as the four-man gank top lane for multiple kills. But it also had some bad calls in team fights, with scattered communication. Even so, G2 still played a close game. What hurt the most was the draft phase, letting Gangplank through as Blue Team, which hurt in the end. It’s tough to have coordinated team fights against a GP because of how much zone he can control. The best part of it all is how Luka “PerkZ” Perković had twotweets earlier in the season question NA’s drafting in the very same circumstance that doomed G2 today. What an odd match.

Fnatic’s newcomer looked good today

Earlier this week, Fnatic announced its support Lewis “Noxiak” Felix will be replaced with Johan “Klaj” Olsson. While things weren’t looking great so far, the change was somewhat unexpected. Noxiak had some good plays throughout the season, but Fnatic is seemingly looking for someone with stronger communication and synergy with AD carry Martin “Rekkles” Larsson. The overall problem runs deeper, as Noh “Gamsu” Yeong-jin is nowhere near Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon’s caliber as a top laner, and Lee “Spirit” Da-yoon has been inconsistent. Nevertheless, Klaj had a very good game, with solid plays on Thresh and seemingly good communication with the team with the decisive win today against Elements.